China Digital Times (CDT) » Woeserhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net
Covering China from CyberspaceTue, 31 Mar 2015 19:27:58 +0000en-UShourly1China Digital Timeshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/themes/cdt/images/feedlogo.pnghttp://chinadigitaltimes.net
A Rare Look Into One’s Life on File in Chinahttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/a-rare-look-into-ones-life-on-file-in-china/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/a-rare-look-into-ones-life-on-file-in-china/#commentsMon, 16 Mar 2015 00:11:54 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=182094Authorities in China maintain a personal file, or dang’an, on every citizen, which starts while they are in school with report cards and continues into adulthood with, “religious affiliations, psychological problems and perceived political liabilities.” Citizens are rarely allowed to see inside their dang’an, but Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser had a rare chance to read hers, an experience that was recorded in the film The Dossier. Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times interviewed Woeser about her file:

Q: It’s hard for foreigners to imagine what it’s like to have a personal file that you can never see. What’s it like for ordinary Chinese?

A.: Many of us have no idea what’s inside our dang’an, but our lives can be changed by it. It’s a terrible thing, like an invisible monster stalking you. It’s a special feature of a totalitarian regime. My file was born when I was in high school, at 15, but at the time, I don’t think any of us thought of it as scary.

[…] Q:Anything else notable?

A: The biggest embarrassment was in my self-assessment at work when I wrote, “I love the Communist Party and whenever the party comes to mind, it always reminds me of its kindness to ethnic minorities. [Laughs] I will dedicate my knowledge to the Great Party.”

Clearly my personal sentiments have changed greatly. Seeing my dang’an helped me revisit my past and see how pathetic we were, these 15- and 16-year-olds, saying formulaic things about our love for the motherland, and not permitted to express ourselves. It was a process of turning us into machines, devoid of free spirit or individuality. That’s why I was fired from my job, because the Communist Party does not tolerate the truth. I didn’t want to be a machine, so I spoke the truth. Now that I’ve left the system, my soul is free, and I’m happy. [Source]

“I want it so that this [the Cultural Revolution] never happens in China again, so this is my tireless job,” [“do-it yourself documentary maker”] Xu [Xing] said on a recent afternoon sitting at his kitchen-top editing bay. “I tell the people I interview, ‘Clearly, I can’t bring you any money or other reward. The main thing I do is let other people know your story.'”

With the ruling Communist Party zealously enforcing its own version of Chinese history, Xu’s truth-telling is nothing less than an act of defiance. The government has largely succeeded in erasing or playing down whole swaths of Communist-era history by controlling what’s talked about in the country’s classrooms, museums and books, as well as in other areas of public life.

[…] You Weijie, whose husband died in the Tiananmen massacre, has conducted interviews with relatives of more than 40 other victims and stored the audio and video recordings overseas. Some are available online.

Tsering Woeser held onto dozens of her father’s old photos of the Chinese military destroying temples and persecuting Buddhist priests and officials in the far western region of Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. In 2006, a Taiwan-based publisher put out a book of the photos. […] [Source]

“We stood up for this because different voices — even if they’re sometimes offensive — can make the world a better and more interesting place,” he wrote. “[W]e never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world. …This is what we all need to reject — a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won’t let that happen on Facebook. I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence.”

Zuckerberg’s brief post has been liked by more than 435,000 people and shared by more than 45,000. The applause is loud and clear.

But did Zuckerberg forget something? About two weeks ago, Facebook censored a video I posted about a self-immolating Tibetan in China, and around the same time the Facebook account of exiled Chinese writer Liao Yiwu was suspended for posting photos of a Chinese artist streaking in Stockholm to protest China’s imprisonment of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Thanks to media reports of these two incidents of Facebook censorship, Zuckerberg can’t really paint himself as a hero who would die to defend freedom of expression. [Source]

“Freedom of expression includes criticism, disagreement or even rejection of faiths or ideology … but should not and must not allow ‘insult’,” Abbasi had written. “Would it be ‘freedom of expression’ if I brand black people as niggers or if I say Hitler was a messiah? Would I not be branded a racist or anti-semitic?”

[…] Zuckerberg’s strong response to the Hebdo attack has thrown Facebook’s attitude to free speech into the public eye again. The social network is among the least permissive online, and is famous for removing content, including pictures of breastfeeding mothers, that it decides is in violation of its community standards.

[… Pando Daily’s Nathaniel Mott commented] “It would be one thing for Zuckerberg to express support for those most affected by the Charlie Hebdo killings. No one should be killed for their beliefs. But it’s another thing entirely to use this tragedy to white-wash Facebook’s murky relationship with numerous governments and pretend it’s not the least free social service available.” [Source]

When a state – say, Russia — asks Facebook to block the Internet, the company faces a “tricky calculus,” he said. What’s the benefit of denying a censorship request? Zuckerberg said he “can’t think of any examples” where a company like Facebook has taken a stand on free speech and gotten a country to change its laws as a result.

Getting blocked would only take Facebook away for everybody else. What good would that do? “Our responsibility” is to keep Facebook operational at all costs, he said.

Zuckerberg said Facebook doesn’t do this for business reasons. “If we got blocked in a few more countries, that probably wouldn’t affect our business a lot,” he said. “This is really about our mission and our philosophy.” [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/01/facebook-founder-not-exactly-honest-free-speech/feed/0Woeser Accuses Facebook of Censoring Postshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/woeser-accuses-facebook-censoring-immolation-photos/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/woeser-accuses-facebook-censoring-immolation-photos/#commentsMon, 29 Dec 2014 03:53:19 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=180166Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser has accused Facebook of censoring a post which included images of the recent self-immolation of Kalsang Yeshi, a 37-year-old monk who set himself on fire in Dawu County, Sichuan on December 23. After posting about his death, Woeser received a message from Facebook that the content violated the company’s “community guidelines” and would not be posted.

Tsering Woeser, who has written several books about Tibet and is a critic of Chinese policies in the region, said she posted a short item about Kalsang Yeshi, a 37-year-old monk who set himself on fire in front of a police station on Dec. 23 in Dawu County, part of the Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Sichuan.

[…] Ms. Woeser, who is based in Beijing, said she believed the post may have been deleted because of the disturbing nature of the self-immolation, or because of efforts to sanitize material that might be critical of the Chinese authorities. She joined Facebook in 2008 and has posted extensively about self-immolations, but says this was the first time the company had removed her content.

“I was really surprised. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she said of her reaction to the deletion notice. “I thought, ‘How is it that this has become like a Chinese website?’ ” [Source]

Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences and raise awareness about issues important to them. Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve graphic content that is of public interest or concern, such as human rights abuses or acts of terrorism. In many instances, when people share this type of content, it is to condemn it. However, graphic images shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence have no place on our site.

When people share any content, we expect that they will share in a responsible manner. That includes choosing carefully the audience for the content. For graphic videos, people should warn their audience about the nature of the content in the video so that their audience can make an informed choice about whether to watch it. [Source]

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was recently accused of pandering to Chinese authorities in an effort to be allowed entry into the China market, where the site has long been blocked. During a visit to California by China’s “Cyberspace Minister” Lu Wei, Zuckerberg was photographed showing him a copy of Xi Jinping’s “The Governance of China,” and saying he had shared the tome with his staff.

The punishment was among the harshest that Chinese officials have imposed on a political dissident in recent years. Officials announced Ilham Tohti’s sentence after holding a two-day trial in Urumqi, the regional capital, that ended last Wednesday. Mr. Tohti was taken by the police last January from his home in Beijing, where he teaches economics at Minzu University, and was brought to Xinjiang to be held here and charged with separatism, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Officials in Xinjiang are grappling with a surge in violence between the mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs and the Han, the dominant ethnic group in China. Communist Party leaders have long said that Xinjiang is in a battle with the forces of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism and that all steps must be taken to stamp out the insurgency. But foreign scholars, diplomats and human rights advocates denounce China’s hard-line policies against the Uighurs, and they say the harsh measures that China has taken against moderates like Mr. Tohti will only lead to further radicalization of Uighurs and a rise in violence, including the kind encouraged by foreign jihadist groups.

[…] Prosecutors presented eight main arguments in trying to prove Mr. Tohti guilty, Mr. Li said. One was that Mr. Tohti had “internationalized” the Uighur issue by giving interviews to foreign reporters and had translated foreign articles and essays about Xinjiang to be posted on Uighur Online. [Source]

@liu_xiaoyuan: I received a call from the family, who said the sentencing just ended. Ilham was sentenced to life imprisonment for separatism, with confiscation of all assets as an additional punishment. He said a single sentence rejecting the judgment and protesting before bailiffs led him out of the courtroom.

“This is so thorough and transparent a miscarriage of justice as to take one’s breath away,” said Elliot Sperling, an expert on Tibet at Indiana University and friend of Tohti’s. “By no stretch of the imagination — even the authoritarian imagination — could this be considered a fair trial. The severity of the sentence stands in inverse proportion to the substance of the charges.”

[…] Mo Shaoping, a Chinese human rights lawyer, said the verdict would only exacerbate the conflict in Xinjiang, and was part of a broad crackdown not only on ethnic issues but on freedom of expression generally.

[…] “Tohti asked me to deliver a message before the trial, that no matter how heavy the sentence he’d get, he hopes that his people and his family won’t have hate in their heart,” Li [Fangping, Ilham Tohti’s lawyer] said, speaking by telephone from Urumqi. “He said he would continue to advocate for communication and understanding between people, but that he’d also continue to defend the rights of the Uighur people.” [Source]

The imprisonment of Mr Tohti, and the confiscation of all his assets, have come amid a broader crackdown on activists, intellectuals and lawyers since Xi Jinping became China’s leader in late 2012. Though few outside China had heard of Mr Tohti, and even fewer would have viewed Mr Tohti as much of a threat to Communist Party rule, his sentencing will almost certainly make him an enduring international symbol for human rights activists. Another intellectual sentenced to a lengthy prison term, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Wang Lixiong, a dissident writer, tweeted after Mr Tohti’s sentencing […] that the authorities had made him a “Uighur Mandela”.

Mr Tohti himself had long expected this day to come. In the video interview below, conducted in November 2009, he talks of being prepared for a long term in prison, or even a death sentence. “That just might be the price our people have to pay,” he says. “Though I may have to go, perhaps that will draw more attention to the plight of our people. People will think more about it and perhaps more people will know about me.” [Source]

The interview is conducted by Tibetan writer Woeser, of whom Ilham Tohti has been described as a Uyghur counterpart. She highlighted the sacrifices he had already made for his advocacy, which included giving up meat and his car because of financial hardship.

Woeser: A few years ago you were one of the wealthiest Uyghurs in Beijing, but now it’s said you’re one of the poorest. That’s such a dramatic rise and fall for a person to go through, both financially, but also politically and in terms of your safety. Now that you’re in such a precarious situation, what do you make of it all?

Ilham Tohti: I think these problems just need to be faced. As you well know, if you’re that sort of person, with ideals like that, you can easily imagine … [the consequences]. But initially, I didn’t give so much thought to it. I knew at the outset I’d face certain setbacks, maybe even being put in jail for 10 or 20 years. I thought, I can handle that, I’ve always been prepared for that.

[…] Whatever the government decides to do, I’m ready. We already lost our money when they froze our accounts. […]

[…] I think for a nationality there comes a point, and in this country with the way things are, where you can go to jail for what you say, for running a website, for just speaking the truth … which for me would be an honor. As I’ve said before, to trade my humble life to call for freedom … gladly, I’d be proud to do it. [Source]

In recent years, as China has been buffeted by surging violence in the far western region of Xinjiang, foreign journalists seeking analysis from local scholars relied on one man to make sense of news events: Ilham Tohti, the Uighur economics professor who could always be counted on to give an insightful and spirited assessment of the central government’s latest development initiative in Xinjiang — or the most recent “strike hard” security clampdown. The reliance on one person was not ideal, but pervasive fear long ago persuaded other Uighur academics to keep their mouths shut.

I see that my people are changing. Separatism is continuing to strengthen. Many people have a separatist mentality now. It is much more prevalent since the 5 July incident [rioting in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead in Urumqi, the regional capital].

Many problems are caused by the authorities, but I am also worried that many of my people are becoming extremists. It is not good. It threatens harmony and is detrimental to resolving Xinjiang’s problems. This country is bound to repress more people, and in the end, there won’t be any results. So we can only use peaceful means. [Source]

Wang: It is really strange. It’s something I can’t understand. Whenever police asked me, I’d tell them that Ilham is a very important person. In the future, if there’s to be a solution, he’s important. The government might not be able to control the situation and what they’d need are civil society actors who can play a role. I think that Ilham is that kind of a person. In fact, he’s the only Uighur who as a public intellectual can stand up and speak out. At least as far as I know, he’s the only one who can express himself so clearly, and someone who doesn’t want independence, who wants to live in China and say he’s a Zhongguoren [Chinese person] but wants Xinjiang to have more autonomy. By contrast, the Uighurs abroad, basically all of them want independence.

[…] His criticism of China’s Uighur policies did not get him arrested in the past.

[…] Wang: We all thought he wouldn’t be in trouble. But the only conclusion is dark: it’s that they don’t want moderate Uighurs. Because if you have moderate Uighurs, then why aren’t you talking to them? So they wanted to get rid of him and then you can say to the West that there are no moderates and we’re fighting terrorists. [Source]

Xiao Yong used to hold up placards at protests, demanding that China’s leaders declare their assets in a call for political transparency and accountability. But he stopped after men began following his father around and urging him to persuade his 39-year-old son to drop his activism.

“I started to dread that my father’s health would deteriorate because of this,” said Xiao, a former employee at a state electrical utility in the southern city of Shaoyang. “The government was working on my family members, talking to them and instilling fear in them.”

To deter political and social activists, Chinese authorities routinely target their family members, friends and associates, pressuring them to be unwilling agents of persuasion or penalizing them directly.

[…] Sometimes they use more menacing tactics, such as blocking children from their schools, stripping spouses of employment and placing relatives under investigation for fraud. [Source]

Only when we were older did we realize that in the process of assimilating we had left behind a piece of ourselves. I, for one, lost my grip on some traditional Tibetan sounds. My relatives in Lhasa would later say my tongue must have been operated on by the Chinese. Tibetan — my mother tongue — became so mangled that even my pronunciation of “Lhasa” didn’t sound right.

[…] I came home to a vastly different place from my childhood memory, vaguely and largely conjured from my father’s sepia-toned photographs. It was by now full of heavily armed soldiers, rumbling around in armored vehicles, on the lookout for Tibetans who might take to the streets to protest against Beijing’s rule. Barely a year earlier, in March 1989, monks, nuns and lay people had demonstrated on the 30th anniversary of the 1959 uprising, and martial law was declared. (Ever since the 2008 riots, Beijing has called implementing Chinese-language education “a major political task” in the Tibetan regions. Chinese officials have now been charged with exterminating Tibetan-language education in order to maintain “harmony” and political stability.) [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/learning-forget-tibet-china/feed/0Beyond the Dalai Lama: Woeser and Wang Lixionghttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/beyond-dalai-lama-woeser-wang-lixiong/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/beyond-dalai-lama-woeser-wang-lixiong/#commentsSat, 09 Aug 2014 02:49:50 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=176122In a two-part interview at The New York Review of Books, Ian Johnson talks to Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser and her husband, author Wang Lixiong. They discuss Chinese policies in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; the failure of the Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangay’s political strategies; the lack of “substantive relationship” between Tibetans in Tibet and in exile; and the gradual emergence of Woeser’s sense of Tibetan identity. Wang concludes:

In the future what I’m most worried about is that there will be more senseless killing like the Uighur attacks in Kunming, or that Chinese soldiers will continue to kill Uighurs indiscriminately in Xinjiang. We want to avoid this kind of bloodshed. But can we start a real dialogue to avoid the bloodshed? We need a dialogue but the moment we start one, it’s cut. We started a dialogue between Chinese netizens and the Dalai Lama but they closed it down. We had a discussion with Ilham [Tohti, the Uighur academic] and he was arrested. So even though we’re working hard, we’re not succeeding because we’re too weak compared to the government.

So what do we do? We have to keep trying. But will it result in anything? Will there be an effect? We can’t control it. So in a way every society, every country has its fate. This fate is perhaps something we can’t control. We can only do what we must do. At least we can tell our heart, I did what I could. [Source: Part 1, Part 2]

Woeser also describes her repeatedly unsuccessful efforts to visit Lhasa. This week, she tried again. Radio Free Asia reports that she was detained and intimidated at the airport for three hours on Friday, and that her 72-year-old mother had also been interrogated. She was allowed to stay in the city, but “the authorities told me that they would ‘take actions’ if they found my conduct during my stay in Lhasa unacceptable.” The couple were recently kept under house arrest for two days in Beijing to prevent Woeser from meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

I have and always will believe in the Tibetan land, there are so many outstanding senior monks and lay people who are constantly thinking about the challenging situation and sinister fate of us only about 6 million Tibetans. In order to be saved from being assimilated or extinguished, countless Tibetans are resisting by means of various measures, self-immolation is among the most bitter and desperate one. The Chinese government, continually increasing its repression, criminalising the entire families of self-immolators and labelling their behaviour as “terrorism” will one day in the future defame the entire Tibetan people as “terrorists”, their attempts to fabricate this collective image will never stop. The goal is clearly to thoroughly reverse the image that Tibetans enjoy in the world of being a non-violent and peaceful people.

Through many years of cruel suffering, these outstanding senior monks and lay people are probably able to foresee this danger. Will today’s movement of throwing away and destroying knives that started in the Kham and Amdo regions not be a strong message to tell the world that Tibetan people will preserve their “non-violent” image by starting from personal sacrifices and will it not prove the attempt to label them as “violent” fruitless? […] [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/tibetans-destroying-weapons/feed/0Tibetan Activist Woeser on Her Latest House Arresthttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/tibetan-activist-woeser-latest-house-arrest/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/tibetan-activist-woeser-latest-house-arrest/#commentsTue, 15 Jul 2014 10:55:41 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=175097Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser discusses her recent house arrest and the current situation in Tibet with The New York Times. She and her husband Wang Lixiong were confined to their Beijing home for two days after she was invited to a dinner at the U.S. embassy during Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit last week. From Edward Wong:

“When the embassy contacted me, it was via my mobile phone, which has always been tapped,” Ms. Woeser said in a telephone interview on Monday. “So I was a little surprised by the invitation when they called. I thought, hmm, a real invitation. The national security guys surely know. Such a public invitation, does that mean it was granted? I was a little surprised by the invitation itself, but not the house arrest.”

[…] Most of the guards were students from the People’s Public Security University, which provides training in security and law enforcement, Ms. Woeser wrote on her blog, “Invisible Tibet,” on the night the house arrest began.

[…] “They were summer interns,” she wrote on Twitter. “They were learning how to deal in the future with the enemies of the party.” [Source]

Wang Lixiong and I arrived in Beijing from Inner Mongolia and got to our door at around 6:00 in the evening. At 7:00 State Security arrived. They said they would be taking up their posts for the next two days and that we were forbidden to go out. I asked for the reason and they said that it was confidential. But I know that it’s because the day before yesterday an American Embassy official had called me on my mobile phone and invited me this evening to the embassy residence. […]

The photo shows State Security and students whom State Security had sent over from the Public Security University taking up posts at the elevator by our door. Wang Lixiong asked the Public Security University students if they knew that what they were doing was illegal. A student gave a very funny answer: “I have the right to not answer your question.” It was as if he were being questioned at trial. [Source]

She added that she would have liked to thank Kerry for the State Department “International Women of Courage” award she received last year. Due to travel restrictions, she was unable to accept the award in person. The department hailed Woeser as “the most prominent Mainland activist speaking out publicly about human rights conditions for China’s Tibetan citizens.”

The plain-clothed guards at our door have gone. This house arrest is over. It’s quite clear that it was meant to stop me attending the dinner I’d been invited to at the U.S. Embassy. Just as the BBC reported, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. side had asked me and another winner of a State Department International Women of Courage award, lawyer Guo Jianmei, to attend a private dinner meeting on women’s issues.

Under China’s system for stability maintenance, or weiwen, authorities have implemented an extensive security apparatus and show overwhelming force in order to “maintain harmony and stability in Tibet.” At the same time, the Chinese government has sought to suppress the dissemination of accurate news from Tibet[1] through censorship and restrictions on foreign tourists.

Chinese authorities go to great lengths to censor the information available in the PRC. They have implemented measures that stretch across all forms of media, including responding to the ever-shifting landscape of the Internet with what is often called the Great Firewall. Even the fast-pace and diffuse dynamic of online social media have not allowed it to evade the grasp of authorities, who are becoming increasingly more adept at imposing measures that curb social media activity. This crackdown has resulted in a decrease of Weibo users and a shift to other platforms, such as WeChat.

Despite authorities’ efforts to censor to crack down on social media, ICT was able to collect hundreds of images and messages from the popular Chinese microblogging site, Sina Weibo, using the crowd-sourced perspective of Chinese tourists to further document the harsh security measures implemented in Tibet by Chinese authorities. […] [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/chinese-microbloggers-reveal-systematic-militarization-tibet/feed/0Woeser: Tibet’s Enduring Defiancehttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/woeser-tibets-enduring-defiance/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/woeser-tibets-enduring-defiance/#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 21:31:42 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=169752At The New York Times, Tibetan writer Woeser marks the recent fifth anniversary of the first of well over 100 Tibetan self-immolations:

On Feb. 27, 2009, three days into the Tibetan New Year, a 24-year-old monk in his crimson and yellow robe emerged from the confines of the Kirti Monastery into the streets of Ngawa, in a the Tibetan area of southwestern China. There, in the shadow of a 98-foot-tall monument to the gods of longevity, the man burst into flames — thus sparking the first of many self-immolations that spread across the Tibetan regions of China.

[…] The number of self-immolations peaked at 28 in November 2012, when a new slate of national leaders was installed during the 18th Communist Party Congress in Beijing. It was evident that the self-immolators were hoping that they could spur the new leaders toward a policy shift on Tibet.

But these hopes soon faded. Once the party’s chosen ones assumed their positions, they declared war on self-immolation, with harsh measures against “accessories,” meaning family members and relatives, villagers and even the monastery associated with any self-immolator. Since then, several hundred Tibetans have been arrested and imprisoned; many more have been given stiff fines and even barred from making pilgrimages to holy sites.

Of late, there have been far fewer self-immolations. But it would be wrong to see this as a sign that Beijing has gained the upper hand. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/woeser-tibets-enduring-defiance/feed/0Community Punished for Self-Immolationshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/one-county-community-punished-self-immolations/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/one-county-community-punished-self-immolations/#commentsTue, 18 Feb 2014 19:53:38 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=169190Over the past five years, Tibetans in the Tibetan regions of China and Delhi, India have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule. Tibetans struggle to maintain their religious beliefs and culture in a country where their spiritual leader is labelled a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” by the central authorities. The news of self-immolations is one of the few clues the outside world has to the situation in Tibet and Tibetan regions of Sichuan.

Tibetan blogger and activist Woeser has tweeted a photo of new regulations imposed in Zoigê County which punish not only self-immolators, but also their next-of-kin, their monastic communities, and the temples and towns where they set themselves alight:

Every single one of the 16 “Notice of Provisional Anti-Self-Immolation Regulations” is absurd and terrifying. “Villages (districts) or temples where a self-immolation occurs must make a security deposit of 10,000-500,000 yuan into an anti-self-immolation fund”; “The immediate family of self-immolators will be denied permission to leave the country (border) or travel to the Tibet Autonomous Region for three years”…

A full translation of the notice follows:

Zoigê County People’s Government

Notice of Provisional Anti-Self-Immolation Regulations

To all cadres and the masses:

In this pivotal period for the county’s rapid economic and social development and its long-term stability, the vast majority of the general populace, temples, and monks have resolutely upheld the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the socialist system, and the Party’s system of regional ethnic autonomy. This has brought positive gains in maintaining ethnic harmony and social stability throughout the county. However, an extremely small number of criminals and individuals with ulterior motives purposefully act to undermine the overall stability and unity of society in order to achieve their nefarious hidden agendas through a series of self-immolations. These acts have an extremely detrimental influence and seriously disturb the order of everyday life and the people’s production capacity, while also seriously hindering the healthy development of the county’s economy and society. In order to combat these crimes, mete out the necessary punishment and reward, effectively maintain a harmonious and stable social environment, and safeguard the fundamental interests of the masses, and after due research and decision-making, the county government hereby makes the following special provisions:

1. All immediate family of an individual who self-immolates (including parents, spouse, children, and siblings) will no longer be eligible to become a national civil servant, apply for unemployment, become workers or service personnel, or to serve in the military.

2. All immediate family of an individual who self-immolates will no longer be eligible to take part in elections or serve as a representative in any level of people’s congresses [e.g. provincial and national], a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee member, or a village (district) cadre.

3. Civil servants working in national-level government offices, professionals, workers, and service personnel should consciously strengthen the education of their immediate family; if any one of an individual’s relatives self-immolates, the individual will be strictly dealt with in accordance with regulation.

4. Any individual who commits or is actively involved in a self-immolation will lose all household (residential) benefits for three years and social benefits for one year.

5. Any national investment project being undertaken in a village (district) or temple where a self-immolator is located will be stopped or suspended. All investment and civil society capital projects in the village (district) will be halted.

6. The home (residence) of anyone who commits or is actively involved in a self-immolation will be labeled an untrustworthy household, and the village (district) or temple where the self-immolation occured will be labeled an untrustworthy village (district) or temple, and will be unable to receive loans for three years. Any financial institution that has already granted a loan [to a household, village or temple labeled untrustworthy] will only accept payments and will not disburse further funds.

7. Villages (districts) or temples where a self-immolation occurs must make a security deposit of 10,000-500,000 yuan into an anti-self-immolation fund. If no other self-immolations occur within two years, the money will be refunded; if another self-immolation occurs, the money will be placed into the national treasury, and another deposit will be required.

8. Self-immolations will be linked to the financial support granted to village group (district) cadres, members of the democratic temple management committee, and responsible religious leaders; these people will also not be eligible for excellence awards in that year.

9. Land use rights for farmland and pastures held by self-immolators will be revoked; operating rights for farmland and pastures in the self-immolator’s village (district) will be frozen.

10. For all immediate relatives of an individual who commits self-immolation and the households of active participants, rights to real estate and land will be confirmed, but will not receive any certification; they will not be granted permission to conduct any business activities for three years.

11. The immediate family of self-immolators will be denied permission to leave the country (border) or travel to the Tibet Autonomous Region for three years.

12. Wherever a self-immolation occurs, a “serious measure” will be taken; matters will be handled with the strictest comprehensive administrative enforcement possible.

13. In villages (districts) and temples where self-immolations occur, the township or temple will conduct a legal study session for villagers (residents), monks and nuns, and responsible religious teachers. Immediate family members of a self-immolator and others actively involved who can be implicated by only minor evidence or whose actions do not constitute a criminal offense and have not received legal punishment will be required to participate in legal education classes at a separate locality of 15 or more days in length.

14. Monks and nuns at temples where self-immolations have occurred will be strictly restricted from participating in impromptu and large-scale, cross-regional Buddhist religious events.

15. The finances of temples associated with a self-immolation will be thoroughly examined in accordance with the law. These temples will be ordered to halt all business activities. The temple’s revenue, donations received, and expenditures will be reported to the temple management committee (office) and will be periodically made public to all monks, nuns, and the religious masses.

16. Individuals who provide leads and other information regarding acts of self-immolation will, once their tips are verified, receive an award of 2,000-500,000 yuan, and the identity of the informant will be kept strictly confidential.

The above regulations are effective immediately upon publication, and take precedent over any other provisions inconsistent with the above.